CLEVELAND — New numbers show in 2020 alone, 10,000 cyber crime tips were given to Cuyahoga County’s Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force (ICAC).
“We know that cyber tips are skyrocketing right now,” said ICAC Director Fallon Radigan.
Cyber tips come from concerned parents, citizens and law enforcement. The tips are focused on images that could depict underage nudity. They’re sent to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.
From there, the tips could be sent to task forces like the one where Radigan works.
“Specifically in 2019 we had about 7,500 cases, during the pandemic in 2020 we had about 10,000 cyber tips, and right now [in 2021], we have about 4,300 cyber tips.”
After seeing such a spike in 2020, Radigan has some advice for parents.
“You want to tell your children not to be friends with people they do not know. You don’t want them to send information that they don’t want others to know.”
She said it’s important for parents to check the privacy settings on their child’s online accounts, make sure children aren’t sharing location information and to monitor who their kids are taking to.
“We do have undercover investigators on online applications chatting with individuals, posing as children, and they’re trying to seek out sexual predators, which they do.”
In the last three years the Cuyahoga County ICAC Task Force caught more than 100 predators in northeast Ohio who met up with the undercover investigators, thinking they were children.
For more on how to keep your kids safe visit icactaskforce.org
